Dockers ready for secret midfield business

Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich is confident ruckman Aaron Sandilands will be able to negate any Hawthorn midfield manipulation in Friday night’s grand-final replay, with the Hawks possibly set to reprise the surprise tactic they believed helped them secure last year’s premiership.

Sandilands has been in exceptional form this season, having 39 hitouts against Collingwood in round one and 58, with 20 to advantage, against the Gold Coast on Saturday. His height and reach is a threat against any ruckman.

Heading into last year’s grand final, the Hawks handed prime midfielder Sam Mitchell the unglamorous task of helping to blunt Sandiland’s tap work by directing him into the ruckman’s preferred hitting zones, and dragging tagger Ryan Crowley with him, thus helping to stymie the space for the Dockers’ onballers to run into.

As detailed in Michael Gordon’s recent book Playing to Win, Crowley may have technically won the battle on Mitchell, holding him to just eight kicks but the Hawks maintain ''stats are not the sole measure of the game''.

''The Hawks had done their homework on Freo’s Sandilands, and Mitchell’s task was to take Crowley into the giant ruckman’s ‘'hit zone' at stoppages and so restrict the ability of Freo’s other on-ballers, Nat Fyfe, Michael Barlow and David Mundy, to get clean possessions and easy exits,'' Gordon wrote.

''He performed it with cool efficiency, laying almost as many tackles as he won kicks and having a positive impact in some 30 contests without actually getting the ball.''

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Despite a personal season high of 44 hitouts, many experts left Sandilands off the Dockers’ list of best players in the 15-point loss.

Mitchell, a late withdrawal against Essendon last Friday because of a calf issue, will need to prove his fitness at a light training run on Thursday at Waverley Park if he is to return.

If the brilliant ball winner was not to play, the Hawks could still attempt to use Crowley and his new Hawthorn opponent in somewhat of a blocking role at stoppages in a Dockers’ midfield now missing the suspended Fyfe and an injured Barlow.

While Mitchell’s grand-final role was a surprise to the football public, Pavlich, who flew with his teammates to Melbourne on Wednesday night, said such moves were the hallmark of a strong midfield.

''I wasn’t intimately involved in the midfield but there is a knowledge that good midfielders and good midfields in the competition will to try jam up up the opposition’s hit space with the tagged players,'' Pavlich told Fairfax Media.

''That is getting into some midfield specifics that all the good teams will try to manipulate the areas where the opposition tries to run the ball or hit it to.

''That’s why they [Hawthorn] are a good team, because they have players that sacrifice their role for the team to get it done for them. That’s a part of the reason why they won the GF last year.''

Pavlich said the Dockers had been working on attempting to find more space at stoppages.

''The midfield group has been working at that for quite some time, the variety of hits, the different ways to exit the ball from the midfield,'' he said.

''Whilst Nat [Fyfe] won’t be out there at the weekend, any number of players that go through that area for us are well skilled. At the end of the day, all the science work in there is important but what gets it completely done is fierce hard bodies going at the footy. We certainly know both teams have those.''

Hawks’ vice-captain Jordan Lewis said this week that new ruckman Ben McEvoy and his onballers would spend considerable time analysing the best methods to attempt to tame Sandilands.

''Every side would go into a game against Sandilands expecting not to probably win their fair share of hitouts. You’ve really got to make sure you’ve got the guys on the ground to combat that,'' he said.

''You can try every trick in the book, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to really nullify their midfielders ... probably try to keep his taps in close, if he gets those taps outside, they’re very unpredictable.''

Sandilands was able to regularly hit the ball into space against the Suns on Saturday night, helping the Dockers’ onballers dash forward and deliver the ball to their forwards with space to work in.

He boasts a league-high 75.8 winning percentage in contests this season, with Greater Western Sydney’s Jonathan Giles (67.9) the next best.

His hitout-to-advantage rate of 27.8 per cent is the fourth best of the top 10 ruckmen for contests attended.

Early season footage suggests Dockers’ coach Ross Lyon, a masterful defensive tactician, wants his men, when they have the ball, to attack more through the corridor and kick more goals - an area some experts believe is their only weakness as they plot redemption this season.